Battle to Save Plane Show Difficulties in Paring Defense Budget

The Air Force's budget-cutting plan to retire hundreds of jets that have provided invaluable protection for U.S. troops is creating strange bedfellows, as influential lawmakers and longtime critics of Pentagon bloat rally to save the A-10 "Warthog."

For more than two decades, the A-10 Thunderbolt II has provided aerial protection to ground troops, a task it has performed from Iraq's "Highway of Death" in the first Gulf War to the Taliban strongholds of eastern Afghanistan. Few people at the Pentagon...